


(if you and i are) all that's left

by templeofshame



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Ends, Introspection, M/M, vague reference to depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 00:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19074088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/templeofshame/pseuds/templeofshame
Summary: Dan spends a lot of time thinking about what the end will be. Whatever that means.





	(if you and i are) all that's left

**Author's Note:**

> beta-thanks to @ablissa and @waveydnp and @insectbah, plus moral support thanks to @capriciouscrab, @outphan, other people in word wars, anon... it took a bunch of people for me to get through the wrenches dan's been throwing at this fic. but i'm just not gonna care. this is my world where i get to ignore all that.

When Phil stops responding, Dan won’t have lost anything. Well, he might lose the comfortable escape of AmazingPhil videos. But nothing else. 

It’s probably not happening now. Now, Phil probably fell asleep. He’s allowed to spend hours away from the internet if he wants, or even specifically away from Dan. Everyone needs a break from him sometimes. And Dan needs a break from people, too. Just not from Phil. Or he hasn’t yet. But if Phil does, that doesn’t mean anything’s ending soon.

They haven’t even met. It’s theoretical in both directions, the end and the idea that there’s even a beginning. Maybe everything’s made of stardust, but the internet has a kind of scientific magic that lets Dan escape his world, that’s made Phil part of his reality, but it seems especially delicate. The internet is the first thing to go in any apocalypse, or even a more mundane horror film. Even power outages tease Dan; the internet can always be taken away. And then he’s just alone in the dark, thinking too much.

Dan won’t be alone when Phil stops answering, not really. He still has mates, even if they’re all off at uni and Dan hasn’t bothered much with keeping in touch. He still has a girlfriend, more or less. He could still, if he tried. Not that he expects his mates or girlfriend to understand or care about the loss and emptiness he’ll feel when Phil gets sick of him. But Dan’ll be going to uni, he’ll be busy with applications soon and then new friends, and besides there’s plenty of video games and YouTube that won’t make Dan think about Phil. Some, anyway.

Not that there’ll be anything much to think about. Friendships end. Hopes die. And god, is Dan gonna cling to this one as long as he can. Maybe the heat death of the universe can come first.

*

When he’s looking back from his life of real jobs, Dan will probably see this self as ungrateful. He doesn’t have to be a real adult with real adult problems yet. He’s allowed to be that weird guy who can occasionally be heard talking to himself in his room, and who mostly fucks off to his boyfriend’s flat. Who is currently waiting for said boyfriend to get back from the shops, and pouting about revising instead of actually doing it. Most of the time, he can pretend it doesn’t matter, that he can hide with Phil forever and they can live on love and AdSense alone. Until he has to go to class, or try to revise, or think about that future Dan. However miserable law school is making him now, there’s room for that to get worse. 

At least he has time for YouTube. More time than he would if he were revising like he should. And Phil hasn’t gotten a real job yet either. But he’s AmazingPhil, and he’s got two degrees and rich parents, and Dan doesn’t have any of those things. He’s got Phil and a growing audience and that’s about all going for him, and the audience won’t grow forever. That’s why he’s supposed to not hate law. When YouTube dries up, spits him out, whatever it does, there’ll still be law, giving guys in suits big paychecks and Respect. Not that Dan can imagine himself as anything but ridiculous in the srs bsnss world, but he’ll be a different person then. Maybe not someone he wants to be, but he wants to have money, some kind of stability, some way for his parents to realize he’s an adult and for his opinions to have a little weight with people who aren’t teenage girls. 

Not that he’s not extremely grateful for teenage girls. But he can’t rely on them in the long run, and he can’t count on getting anyone else to care about him. He’s not had a lot of luck with that IRL either, although some of Phil’s friends seem to like him well enough. And, well, Phil. Phil is very much not a teenage girl and still, he loves Dan. He cares even though he’s seen the mess Dan is. And when he says it’ll be alright, that giving YouTube a serious go isn’t crazy and that Dan is smart enough for law, he’s not being polite or taking the piss. He’s coming from a bizarre sense of faith. Faith in Dan. It’s another kind of weird and wonderful thing Phil’s mind cooks up.

Maybe Dan can fight his way through, stuff himself in a suit, ‘cause what other choice does he have? When he has to get a real job, he doesn’t want it to be the kind of retail crap he’s done — and gotten fired from — in the past. He needs a degree in something, and the only thing he actually likes has been established as a don’t-quit-your-day-job situation, Young Shakespeare Award notwithstanding.

Phil could have a real job. Sometimes, Dan thinks he’s crazy to have turned down that internship, to have chosen YouTube instead. When it’s all over, Phil could still take the other path, edit real films for real money. They’d be forgotten, they could hold hands on the tube (at least in some parts of town), and there’d be... certainty. Sick leave, a retirement plan. And Dan would be… what? A lawyer? In a suit with a briefcase, living the life he saw up close at his work experience? Or the awkward boyfriend that Phil tries to get people to hire even though he has no real qualifications?

Maybe he could pull that off. Phil is good at getting people to care about Dan a bit, at making space for him whether Dan’s earned it or not. But Dan wants to earn it.

He doesn’t have forever. As time passes, as Dan makes decisions, he’s losing opportunities. A sort of entropy of possibilities, as Dan’s life — and the rest of the universe — moves toward chaos. Or worse, toward a cold reality he’s doomed himself to by not choosing something better.

But for now, he has a chance to earn space for himself. He can jump through all the hoops and get out of this hell with something that looks like success. And that’s an investment. For when it’s all over, when all they’ve got is education and some experience that’s hard to explain to people. And, well, each other. That’s the plan.

Better plan than the rest of it.

*

“When it’s all over” isn’t just something for the time Dan spends lying on the floor, soaking in the mismatch between his problems and the scale of the universe, or for times like this one, when his mind wanders the same path from the comfort of his sofa crease. It’s not just for their shared apocalyptic musings (and anxieties) or for the times Dan considers the potential benefits of just… not.

Sometimes it’s practical. It’s in between the lines when they meet with their financial planner, and sometimes it comes straight out. They’ve got to do these things now, while people are watching, while people care. And they’ve got to invest wisely — and not spend too much on designer clothes — so that there’ll be money when the fans move on, so that he and Phil’ll at least have time to figure out what comes after. 

So it’s not just Dan thinking about the end while they’re riding the wave of strange success. But it doesn’t keep their financial planner up at night. Even Phil’s sleepless nights mostly seem rooted in an excited type of anxiety. For now, the BBC loves them. For now, they’re writing a book and planning a tour. For now, everything seems to be an opportunity, but opportunities are hard to stockpile.

Still, they’re taking steps. The tour might be even more transient than YouTube, but it’s also huge and crazy and almost like reaching his teenage West End dreams. Whatever future Dan’s life is, he’ll be glad for that. He’s okay with peaking at 24 with this kind of peak.

And when it’s all over, they’ll have a book, pages they can flip through, feel in their hands when the internet feels like a mirage. When their memories seem like the shared delusion of two average weirdos, they’ll have the book to prove that they were, at one time, creative and successful and, frankly, adored. By people other than each other. Which… with each other, the shared delusion is all they need. But it’s still nice to think that some part of the world they’ve made together has a tiny sort of permanence, that future archaeologists could be baffled by it. If the sun doesn’t explode first.

*

Dan’s not sure what the end looks like anymore. It’s always seemed like something that would happen _to_ them, a declaration from… someone, that this is no longer their career, their life. It’s seemed like somewhere they’d be pushed — maybe gently, maybe with some kicking and screaming — by some cruel reality of the world or other. And he’d never put a date on it, but if he’s being honest, he’d expected it to have happened by now. 

But now… It’s not impossible. Maybe it’s still coming, that unequivocal word from on high — from Susan, from their management, from financial planner or doctor or societal collapse — telling them it’s Over. Or maybe it’s happened, without any great pronouncement. He’s on the balcony, looking at the few stars that defy light pollution, and it could be like that; they could be living in the fading light of something long dead. But it’s looking harder than that, scarier than Dan and Phil taking things as they come. It’s looking like they might have to decide. What it is, when it is, how to… end things.

And what will he be, when it’s all over? That’s the real question. What’s the next evolution of his life? If Daniel Howell lives a human life off the internet, without an audience to analyze it, does it make a sound? Does it _mean_ something? Is it even possible?

Maybe it’s silly to be thinking like this when Phil is literally filming inside. Phil just does that, like it’s totally normal. He doesn’t ask if Dan wants to join him anymore, though. They don’t make big plans or have brainstorming sessions; Phil just decides when he wants to film and he films. Sometimes Dan wants that: to just want to film, and film, and post like it’s a normal thing for Daniel Howell, creator of YouTube videos, to do. Maybe the whole thing is in his head. Maybe, when it’s all actually over, he’ll wonder how this ever felt like something was ending.

But it’s not just in Dan’s head. Fans are already grieving, and if they call it an end, it’s hard to completely disagree. If they didn’t have a million different opinions, they could be that voice from on high. But the closest they come to consensus is that Dan (and Phil, but especially Dan) should say something. Something clear, something concrete, something absolute. An explanation, a plan, even a clean break. But nothing feels clear or concrete or absolute to Dan. And even if he knew for sure that this was the Great Over, Dan’s not been good at clean breaks in the past, either. 

Not that he’s got much in common with that Dan, back before — God, he really hasn’t, has he? That was always the dream, to get far away from being that Dan. And he’s succeeded, even if he shares with that Dan the itch of something new coming, under his skin. A desperation for it, and a creeping fear. It’s hard to say if Dan now is more or less decisive; he’s not quite as wild with the impulses, but he’s sure of a few more things in his life.

Things like Phil, slipping out from the flat into the cool night air beside him. Phil ruffles the silence with his movement, but doesn’t break it. He’s just slipping into whatever space is next to Dan again, like Dan does for him, has done for nearly a decade. When it’s all over, or if it’s all over now — whatever that means — this will stay. Not forever, of course, but as close as they can get. Eventually, death will take him up on the jokes, or the expansion of the universe will rip it in two.

But for now, there’s a warm, tentative hand on the small of his back, and Dan can’t help thinking about new beginnings.

**Author's Note:**

> [come say hi on tumblr](https://templeofshame.tumblr.com/post/185360404200/if-you-and-i-are-all-thats-left-t-2k-dan). it's pretty quiet there but i still like to exist and talk to people and stuff.


End file.
